Cultic Studies Journal, Vol. 9, No. 2, 1992, Page 34
The Appeal of the Impossible and
the Efflorescence of the Unbelievable:
A Psychoanalytic Perspective
on Cults and Occultism
David A. Halperin, M.D., F.A.P.A.
Associate Clinical Professor of Psychiatry
Mount Sinai School of Medicine
New York, New York
Abstract
There has been a tremendous efflorescence of interest in the occult, the
supernatural, and the satanic. On the level of popular culture, widespread popularity
has been earned by books that embody themes of magic, the magical, and the
afterlife. In vulnerable individuals, this interest has encouraged an affiliation with
groups that propound magic(k) and occult rituals as serious solutions to severe
personal problems. This article presents brief descriptions of the more significant
writers whose work has led to the formation of occult groups and to an increased
interest in satanism. Relevant aspects of their work and its appeal to adolescents are
examined from a psychoanalytic perspective. Finally, case histories are presented to
illustrate these issues.
Our society has witnessed the unprecedented expansion of its scientific horizons into the
realms of the infinitely great and the infinitely minute. It has seen an extraordinary growth in
the knowledge of neuropsychology and neurophysiology, where human intervention into the
very structures of heredity has become so routinized that the procedures of genetic
engineering are of as great an interest to the stockbrokers as the scientist. This same society
has witnessed a paradoxical efflorescence of interest in the occult. Moreover, the very
adolescents whose parents form the avant garde of this scientific elite are avid consumers of
a new obscurantism with its systematized argot of “magick” and the satanic.
The increased interest in the occult and the nonrational among adolescents parallels the
growth of New Age paradigms in society as a whole. New Age boutiques spring up like
mushrooms, hawking ordinary crystals at truly extraordinary prices because of their “healing
powers.” New Age channelers, such as J. Z. Knight and Penny Torres, “communicate” with
“entities” named Ramtha and Mafu, who inhabit locales as diverse as Atlantis and Pompeii. On
a more malignant level, individuals desert their homes and families in fear of an impending
Armageddon, seeking shelter in Montana or joining organizations that promise temporal
power in the “new age of enlightenment.” Even in the Confederation of Independent States,
observers have noted an explosive growth of interest in the occult and the magical. This
article uses psychoanalytic insights to clarify the appeal of the incomprehensible and the
unbelievable (Halperin, 1983).
Historical Perspectives
Interest in “magick” is a persistent current in our technologically preoccupied civilization. In
the Renaissance, Pico della Mirandola introduced the study of Cabala to Christian intellectuals.
Paracelsus and Giordano Bruno, seminal figures in the creation of the scientific attitude, also
expressed an interest in the occult (Wills, 1992). In the 17th century, Rosicrucianism and
comparable systems played in the organization of science, including such groups as The Royal
Society. Later, within the political sphere, Freemasonry played an important cultural role

Cultic Studies Journal, Vol. 9, No. 2, 1992, Page 35
during the Enlightenment, influencing figures as diverse as Benjamin Franklin (the obverse of
the Great Seal of the United States is Masonic in origin) and Mozart (The Magic Flute is an
allegory grounded in Masonic ritual).
The advance of scientific thought during the 19th century was paralleled by increased interest
in cabalistic thought and ritual magic. Elephas Levy in his Histoire de la Haute Magie, Les Clefs
des Grands Mystère, and Dogma et Rituel de la Haute Magie capitalized on this interest in the
exotic and sensational. His work was influential, attracting literary figures such as Baudelaire
and Rimbaud. Rimbaud, himself, with his juxtaposition of fevered creativity, drug use, and
quasimanic search for decadence and depravity is the prototype of the modern adolescent
whose search for transcendence is the counterpoint of his fears of evanescence, transience,
and alienation (Halperin, 1987). And, in modern adolescents one sees the attraction to
marginal and destructive groups who lure vulnerable adolescents who may feel Rimbaud‟s
rage but lack his creativity.
Aleister Crowley: Magister Ludi
The most influential figure in the modern satanist and occult movements was Aleister
Crowley. Crowley was a self-styled practitioner of “magick.” A product of a family adhering to
a fundamentalist dissenter group, the Plymouth Brethren, Crowley served as an organizing
nidus against the complacency of Edwardian England. His occult lodge, The Order of the
Golden Dawn, was a quasi-Masonic group that trafficked in pretentious ritualized “magick”
and adopted as its motto: “Do As Thou Wilt.” Literary figures such as William Butler Yeats
were briefly attracted to Crowley. But they were rapidly repelled by his authoritarianism and
his reliance on quasimystical cant in a ceaseless effort to outrage the establishment.
Crowley‟s activities appear to reflect his rage at having spent his childhood under the
governance of the Plymouth Brethren. It may be apocryphal but nonetheless plausible that his
mother identified him with the Beast of Revelations during his childhood, and that Crowley
adopted this projection as his adult identity. In any event, during his life he signed his letters
“666” (or “FFF”). While Crowley may have seen himself as an occult confidence man, his
books “The Book of the Law, The Lesser Key of Solomon, and Magick: Theory and Practice”
form the basis for the modern “scriptures” of Satanism such as the Necronomicon (1977) and
the Satanic Bible (LaVey, 1969).
The organizations that Crowley founded are not currently extant, and the members of groups
founded by his latter-day disciples, such as the Temple of Set and the Church of Satan, are
not numerous. The importance of these organizations lies in their providing the vulnerable
adolescent with support and an alternate object for identification and/or idealization.
For these adolescents, these “scriptures” reaffirm their sense of alienation and undermine the
influence of conventional morality. These groups and their literature may provide an
intellectual framework for vulnerable adolescents in search of an intellectual reinforcement for
their rage at an adult world whose morality they regard as hypocritical. The simplified
Machiavellianism of the Temple of Set may appeal to adolescents who see the world around
them as being dominated by force, immorality, and unreason. Moreover, Crowley‟s disciples
appeal to those adolescents whose fear of their environment has reached such frightening
proportions that they must resort to “magick” to feel that survival is possible. Indeed, in
literary works dealing with occultism and in clinical cases in which occultism has played a
significant role, an evident leitmotif is the need for “magick,” the need to utilize symbolic
rituals to control an otherwise ominous world.
Modern Literary Perspective
Arthur Machen was one of Crowley‟s most prominent literary disciples. Machen was briefly a
member of the Order of the Golden Dawn. Subsequently, he became a member of the
“Inklings,” a literary group of Christian apologists which formed around Charles Williams and